how we got here

Just tuning in?
Accidentally arrived here through points unknown? Well, here’s what you need to
know.[1]

February 2012: so long birth control! <Already
picking out baby names.>

March 2012 – September 2012: nary a positive ovulation pee strip and
yet, undeterred by science, Sarah believes[2]in miracles that she is pregnant on at least 4 non-consecutive
occasions. (She is not pregnant. Nor is she ovulating.).

September 2012: beginning to believe that something may
actually be, ahem, going awry, Sarah
insistently schedules an appointment with her primary care doctor. Arriving to
find a physician who is literally 9
months pregnant, Sarah is only able to nod longingly as the kindly physician
casually instructs her to just relax![3]

October 2012 – November 2012: through some long-since-forgotten series
of grating anxious-patient phone calls, Sarah is finally given a referral to a reproductive endocrinologist. After
seeing what her fallopian tubes look like full of radioactive dye – checking that off my bucket list –
she finally gets a diagnosis. Hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction. Or, less
pretentiously: you ain’t ovulatin’.

December 2012: cycle 1, Clomid + timed intercourse. A
few follicles, super early period on day 19, no baby.

[1]<What’s that? You want the full back
story? Like the how-C-and-I-met-and-fell-in-love part? That’s long. But for you,
cupcake, here’s the abbreviated version: It’s May 2002, after a terrible
college band concert, we held hands and shared a Hi-C on the way home. We were
just that cool. In retrospect, I think it was just something about the Dr. Strangelove VHS tape in his dorm
room that said come hither. Anyway, I
thought he was pretty fantastic and then we got married in 2010.>